Storm Gathering (11 page)

No, indeed, he would not be jumping on command. Smiling, he thought of all the glory that would come along after successfully prosecuting a despised kidnapper and possible murderer.

And putting the brother of a cop behind bars could look very good on a résumé.

“No calls,” Sammy instructed JoAnne, whisking the detective into his office before she could ask questions. He shut his door and offered Randy Prescott a seat. Instead of sitting behind his own desk, though, he joined him in the adjacent chair.

He didn’t want to appear to be hiding anything.

By the time they’d arrived back at his office, Sammy had learned from Prescott that Taylor had been reported missing, and by the looks of her apartment, the police thought somebody had abducted her. It had apparently been on the news this morning, but Sammy had been in court by eight and hardly ever turned on the TV anyway.

Prescott, droopy eyed and freckle faced, talked slowly enough that time nearly seemed to stop. “When’s the last time you saw Taylor, Mr. Earle?”

“Am I a suspect?” Sammy asked confidently, offering a small smile. “It’s a logical question, considering my profession.”

“Not at this time. I just need some information from you because of your past relationship with Miss Franks.” Prescott talked as if he were reading from a manual. He flipped open his small notepad, obviously eager to write down whatever fell out of Sammy’s mouth. The problem was, nothing ever
fell
out. Every word that came from his mouth was buffed, waxed, and shined before ever leaving his tongue.

“Detective Prescott . . . it is detective, right?”

Prescott smiled. “Yes.”

Sammy scratched his chin. They sent a midlevel officer. That was a good sign. He tried to remember who the supervisor at the Irving Homicide Division was. He couldn’t recall ever being in a trial that used an Irving police officer. He relaxed, settling his shoulders into the wingback, crossing his legs, and giving Prescott his full attention. “So Taylor was abducted?”

“That’s the angle we’re working. When was the last time you saw Miss Franks?”

Sammy shrugged. “I don’t know. Saw her a year ago or so. Have talked to her once or twice on the phone since then, but the relationship was pretty much over.”

“You dated how long?”

“Twelve, fourteen, maybe sixteen months.”

“So it was serious?”

“Sure.”

“Why did you two break up?”

Sammy gazed out the window. This was not going to be an easy question. “You know, Detective, things get complicated.”

“Complicated how?”

“People see things differently. I mean, Taylor was young. She wanted a life that I couldn’t give her.”

“So it just didn’t work out between you two?”

Sammy had spent six months studying body language in a jury-selection class, so he knew how crucial it was in the law-enforcement universe. Forcing himself not to swallow, he answered, “I can’t say it was one thing or another. We fought a lot. In the end, I realized it wasn’t going to work.”

“So you broke it off?”

“We both did.” The tip of his nose begged to be scratched.

“And you say you’ve spoken a couple of times since then?”

“Yes.”

“About?”

“You know, you always second-guess the decision.”

“Right.”

He watched Prescott scribble down notes. He clutched his fingers together until his knuckles were white.
Right
. Said with a bit of skepticism.

“I can’t imagine anyone wanting to hurt Taylor,” Sammy said, causing Prescott to look up from his notes. “She’s as nice as can be.”

“So you’re on good terms with her?”

“No, not really. I mean, it wasn’t a nice breakup. But still, she’s a sweet woman.”

Prescott frowned, sizing him up.

Sammy looked out the window.

“And you were at home last night?”

Sammy nodded.

Prescott stood, walking to the door.

Sammy rose, offered a firm handshake, and opened the door for him. “Whatever I can do to help.”

“We’ll be in touch.”

Sammy resisted the urge to ask about suspects. Instead, he smiled gently as the detective left, then glanced at JoAnne, who was watching with interest.

Sammy turned, wanting to slam the door shut, but knowing the detective was still within earshot. He leaned on his desk, his shaking hands hardly able to steady his trembling body. Closing his eyes, he tried to get a grip. But he couldn’t. There was nothing stable about this situation. He flipped through his Rolodex, trying to find Harlow Bruer’s number.

“Congratulations!”

Sammy whirled around.

JoAnne smiled at him. “I heard the news.”

Sammy gripped the edge of his desk as he stared at her.

She frowned. “Are you okay?”

His stomach was thick with uneasiness.

JoAnne said, “I thought you’d be out celebrating with Kellan and the gang.”

That case
. Sammy said, “Too much work. I need you to get Harlow Bruer on the line.”

Her eyes pinched, obviously annoyed that he had not regarded her kind comments. “Who?”

“
Harlow Bruer,
” Sammy said, firing off an intense glare.

“Who is that?”

Sammy tried to muster any ounce of patience that was left in his body. “The publicist, JoAnne. Hollywood’s greatest spin doctor.” He threw up his arms, punctuating her incompetence. “Get him on the line.”

“I thought of all days, today you would be in a good mood.” She shut the door firmly.

Sammy made his way around his desk, falling into his office chair and lunging forward, resting his head on his desk, entranced by the expensive carpet underneath his feet, the only thing he hadn’t picked out in his office decor.

A nightmare lurked. And this was going to be one long and dark night.

Mick strolled the cement path that led to the Water Gardens, one of his favorite places in Fort Worth. Everything around him smelled aquatic, the air dense with humidity from the leaping fountains. The wind whipped the water out of its place, and it splashed his face and body, cooling him. With damp skin, he turned toward the west, where the fiery sun melted toward the horizon, shooting out fantastical sprays of purple and red light across towering thunderheads. A storm was gathering, drawing energy from every place it could, creating a vortex that would remain hidden in the depths of the clouds until it was ordained to be released.

By the way the thunderhead’s cap toppled, Mick knew it would bring rain—a thunderstorm even—but nothing severe. The atmosphere, though unstable, wasn’t humid enough to generate the kind of supercells that produced tornadoes or straight-line winds. If he got lucky, there would be a grand display of lightning. He loved this time of year, when evening often brought some sort of storm.

Since childhood, Mick had often been able to predict the weather as accurately as the meteorologists with all their high-tech computers. In midmorning, he would look west or south or northwest and know whether it would storm by evening or not. His parents and their friends even placed bets on him. He’d predict where the storms would form, how fast they would move, and what time it would rain in Irving. He ended up having a 67 percent accuracy rate.

It was the air around him. He was sensitive to it, the way it felt against his skin, how hard his lungs had to work to inhale it. Depending on the temperature outside and the amount of moisture in the air, he could tell whether the atmosphere would conceive a storm.

It was a gift.

But not one with much use.

His parents had encouraged him to follow his other gift, which was math. And so he did what everyone else was doing—got an accounting degree. He couldn’t think of anything more boring, and it seemed a graver mistake than his indiscretions, because it was this kind of boredom that landed him in trouble all the time. Thankfully, the football job had opened up, but being the assistant coach, though somewhat fulfilling, still didn’t scratch the itch that tickled his adventurous side.

He’d been unsettled his whole life, feeling displaced. He’d had a loving family, grew up happy, possessed great childhood memories. But he never felt satisfied. He still didn’t.

Mick walked down stone steps into the shadows of one of the man-made cliffs that formed a spraying waterfall. Suddenly cool, he stuck his hands in his pockets and found a bench to sit on. He was about forty feet below street level, and the noise of the busy city traffic drowned in the twenty thousand gallons of water that flowed through the fountains, the falls, and the delicate rivulets that snaked through the park.

He’d been ten when the park had been completed, and he remembered coming down here with his brother and parents, marveling at the cascading waterfall that fell seven hundred and ten feet down the stone wall. Aaron had nearly pushed him in but caught him at the last second. He had gotten in trouble for it, but Mick thought it was kind of funny. He’d have done the same thing had he thought of it.

A halfhearted rumble of thunder came from the west. Mick figured he had about an hour before rain fell. He closed his eyes, trying to find the peace that these waterfalls had brought him before. The pure sound of falling water desensitized the ugly world around him. If only for a few moments, he felt centered and well and whole. It never lasted, though. And of course his mind couldn’t be convinced he was in some exotic and beautiful jungle. It was a manufactured park in the middle of a busy, chaotic city.

But even in his misty and serene surroundings, Mick couldn’t stop his mind from racing, from playing out a hundred different scenarios, including being charged with murder.

Mick cursed the day he’d touched a drop of alcohol. He stared through the waterfall, watching the scene with Taylor unfold inside his head. The sound that now filled his ears was that of water slapping stone.

“I like white-water rafting.”

“Really? I love women who are adventurous.”

“You seem to love women in general.”

“I am a fan of the species.”

“But you’re not a jerk.”

“That’s perceptive.”

“I can tell. You’ve treated me with respect tonight, even though you’re nearly drunk out of your mind.”

“I’m drunk?”

“Very funny.”

“I had a little bit too much.”

“You’re slurring every other word.”

“It’s just my southern accent.”

“I like you, Mick. You’re very funny.”

“But you’re not smiling.”

“I don’t have a lot to smile about.”

“Why don’t you tell me? You’ve been mysterious all evening. Hinting at a lonely heart.”

“I’m not lonely.”

“Then what are you?”

“Nothing.”

“Scared? You look scared to me.”

“You’re drunk. How many of ‘me’ are you seeing, anyway?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“You have to leave, okay?”

“But I don’t want to. Aren’t you enjoying my charming personalities?”

“More than you know. Especially the one that keeps winking at me.”

“Then why do you want me to leave?”

“You just have to leave.”

Mick stood, his clothes damp and his hair tossed about his head like he’d overslept for a day. Even his fingers couldn’t comb it into place. A couple of young women giggled as they passed him. Mick couldn’t even begin to look back at them. He’d normally offer a quick grin, but today there wasn’t any flirtatious energy in him. He mostly just felt sick.

After dragging his weary body back to his car, he fought Fort Worth traffic all the way into Irving. The sun was not down, but the storm was darkening the skies early.

Driving down Claremore Street, on the shiftier side of Irving, he watched a neighbor kick his dog back into the chain-link fence that also housed an old pickup with only one tire. He hated this street, but right now this area was all he could afford. Jenny definitely deserved more than this. One day . . . one day he’d make it big.

Mick watched an obese woman in pajamas sweep off a porch surrounded by three-foot-high weeds. He turned down the next street, where everyone mowed.

Nebulous daylight held its own against the darkening sky, creating an almost perfect platform for the timid storm to move above. He always loved the way daylight willed to hang on, the starless sky capping its warm energy against the earth, just for a few more minutes.

A few droplets of rain pelted the sidewalk as he parked his car and walked toward his house. But before he even reached the small porch, he noticed the door. Open ever so slightly.